Younge Americans

In September, when US-based left-wing Guardian columnist Gary Younge popped up as a bona fide voice of the BBC on From Our Own Correspondent, I pointed out that he had recently described followers of the Tea Party movement as “(a)nnoying, bizarre, incoherent, divisive, intolerant, small-minded, misinformed, ill informed and disinformed…” In other words, just the sort of prejudice against the American right which finds favour at the Beeb. I noted also the irony of a Guardian/BBC journalist accusing others of living “in a politically parallel world where everyone they know believes the same as they do.”

We’re in the middle of a mini Obamafest at the moment as the BBC celebrates the first anniversary of The One’s inauguration. To balance the many pro-Obama films and programmes made by adoring fans, the Beeb has commissioned a couple of documentaries about Americans opposed to Obama. Amazingly, this project was given to someone with a sympathetic view of the subject matter.

In this two-part documentary, author and journalist Gary Younge tells the story of the other side of the Obama phenomenon; the story of those who say that the Obama presidency is nothing but bad news. Younge asks who these people are who feel they have been marginalised by the Obama revolution. He also asks what they don’t like about him and what Obama could do, if anything, to win them over. Younge spends 10 days travelling through rural Arkansas and Kentucky, talking to anti-tax protesters, fundamentalist Christians and libertarians, country club members and local dignitaries to find out how they view the last year under Obama and what their hopes and fears are for the coming year.

18 Responses to Younge Americans

A latest poll shows that only 13% of Americans ‘strongly approve’ of President Obama’s record in Office whereas 40% ‘strongly disapprove’. Anyone who cares about truth would have no trouble seeing that dissatisfaction with President Obama extends far more widely in the States than the stereotyped categories Younge chooses to confine his sample to, and he wouldn’t have to go out and about looking under rocks to try to find these ‘strange’ people. But then, the totalitarian left who run the BBC dont seek truth, they seek power.

hippie — Obama’s strongly approve/strongly disapprove ratings crossed over from plus to minus last summer when Americans suddenly realized they’d been sold a bill of Euro-nanny state goods by a crypto-Marxist.

Hence the Tea Party/Town Hall revolt that sprang up across the States.

The US media (and the BBC) are still in full denial mode.

They’ll find it a tad more difficult around 4am-5am GMT Wednesday morning when the Mass. Senate result is called.

Even if Brown doesn’t quite pull it off, saner Congressional Democrats are going to enter full panic mode.

What is this? The BBC is now funding a report on citizens of a foreign country who don’t happen to worship their elected leader? As if they’re unbelievers waiting to be converted? What can He do to win them over? Stunning evidence of the serious emotional investment your Beeboids have in their beloved Obamessiah. I’ve been using sarcastic religious language for about two years now to describe the BBC’s devotion to Him, out of sheer irritation. But they prove me right nearly every day.

This time it’s the World Service, not the mother ship, so your license fee isn’t being used to pay for this piece of party political broadcasting. But the FO gave nearly £300 million in grants to the BBC last year, all of which goes to the World Service and things like this. So your taxes are still being used to pay for it.

Lets hope at least this time the BBC correspondent doesn’t insult these people with a sexual innuendo, like Kevin Connolly did.

No. “Tea-bagger” is a derogatory term used exclusively by the Left to describe those – myself included – who attend Tea Party protest rallies. It’s a slang term referring to a specific sexual act. There is no question that the term is meant to disparage the attendees.

Mardell didn’t say that critics used the term. He asked, coyly, “what do we call them?” As if we somehow deserve ridicule.

We don’t hear quite as much about the Guantanamo Bay prisoners now do we? Of course Obama has failed to keep his promise to close it within a year. Tucked away on the world Service we had one of Obabma’s appointees explaining that they’d found out that some of the prisoners could indeed be a danger to the US and that lots of precautions had to be taken before they can be released – just as GWB’s administration always said, and a view which BBC interviewers challenged vociferously. Naturally this opinion was now accepted by the BBC interviewer as perfectly reasonable and left unchallenged.

As far as the BBC is concerned only nasty GWB detained these prisoners for the wrong reasons. Nice Mr Obama continues to detain them for the right ones.

It’s not only the BBC which doesn’t seem too bothered about the Guantanamo detainess any more. The usual sit-ins, vigils and demos about the matter seem to have ended too.

Yes indeed. What a huge suprise. Although Obama really cocked-up with the underpants bomber, insisting on dealing with him through the criminal justice system than the military apparatus Dubya set up to fight against terrorist war. One really has to pity the beeb Obamaniacs their lack of self respect.

Didn’t Richard Read (sic), the shoe bomber, also get tried and convicted through the federal judicial system?

Superficially they may seem comparable, but actually they are not. Please read up on the subject. There’s enough on the internet posted by constitutional experts who are not Obama drones, giving full accounts of why the two cases could and should be treated differently.

Hi Scott M. Well firstly, a textual analysis of your response to my comment would surely reveal that you accept the BBC are, to a significant extent at least, ‘Obamaniacs’?

The Reid case and the Abdulmutallab case are very different. Reid came only months after 9/11 a good time before Bush had his military tribunal system in place, and besides that Reid stuck to his Al Qa’eda brief of claiming to have only been acting alone. Abdulmutallab however was reported (see link below) to have been “singing like a canary” until at the direct intervention of Obama he was given all the legal rights of a criminal suspect and clammed up as soon as his lawyer talked to him.

In the second link the Telegraph’s Toby Harnden catalogues Obama’s appalling partisan conduct to cover up for his disasterous handling of the Detroit bombing attempt. You just dont get issues like this examined at the BBC. It’s not a news organisation, its a propaganda organisation. People with self-respect dont abuse postions of trust this way.

The Beeboids still think it’s a done deal. As Matt Frei wrote months ago, The Obamessiah closed Gitmo “with a stroke of his pen.” The fact that it’s still in operation and there are endless complications and delays in closing it doesn’t mean anything to them.

Existentially, Guantanmo Bay no longer exists to them. Any complaints about it now are either just minor criticisms from a few well-meaning but impatient activists, or merely weak attempts to blame Him for the awful things he inherited from Boooooosh.

“We don’t hear quite as much about the Guantanamo Bay prisoners now do we?”

Newsnight did a nightly feature on the subject all last week, complete with its own theme tune, some sort of dirge in Arabic, presumably sung by the Al Quaida male voice choir, which mainly consisted of repeating the word Guanatanamo over and over.

Margolis referrred to the’infamous detention centre’ on at least two seperate occasions. The climax of the mini-series, was when a remorse filled ex-guard met up with two of the Tipton three (the general belief that they are proven liars being tactfully overlooked.) The effect was spoiled, however, because the appearance and demeanour of the bushy bearded one in the burglar’s bonnet gave the impression that he could commit an act of mass-murder with all the carefree insouciance of someone putting on the kettle to make a cup of tea.

Ten days travelling around Kentucky and Arkansas? I’ve been to both. They are hardly representative of the rest of the country. So where is this beeboid coming from? Are we supposed to draw great definitive conclusions from two states? Crap journalism at its best brought to you by al-beeb, famed swallowers of our cash.

I happen to think Obama is a good President, and may yet be a great one, but I am disappointed that the BBC consistently and invariably is pro-Obama, pro-Democrat, anti-Bush, anti-Repbulican and anti-Evangelical. It’s boring.
More than that though, I am baffled by the BBC’s obsession with the US, with US politics, and with US road trips by Britons abroad. Mmmm maybe the denigrated US capitalist system makes for easy living, and the lively US media pipe makes for easy reporting.
Could we not simply hear a little less about the US, and more about Europe, Asia and the Commonwealth countries?
Finally, shouldn’t the real question about Guantanamo be why does the US still have a base in Cuba? Shouldn’t they leave?